Shoot Me Once
by Missie DuCaine
Summary: INDEFINITELY ABANDONED. If you could live in any fandom, what would it be? An innocent question, with a not quite as innocent anwswer. Why...thousands!


Christmas Present. Fun to write. :D  
  
I know who you are  
  
The leader of lost souls  
  
You can't kill me I'm immortal I'm not afraid to die My soul will travel on You can't kill me I'm immortal  
  
Adema - Immortal  
  
"If you could go live in any fandom in the entire world - or out of it, I mean, if you want Star Trek or something - which one would it be?"  
  
Sixteen year old Christine looked up from the framed picture she'd been studying, pushing gleaming curtains of blonde curls away from her face. "Any fandom in the world?" She repeated, pondering the question her friend had posed. "I dunno. There's too many good ones to choose from. I mean, I'm more the kinda person that would want pieces of lots of different fandoms."  
  
"One shot queen, eh?" Nineteen year old Heather leaned back in the hard wooden pew, reaching her arms up to run her fingers through her dirty blonde waves. "Not me. I'd need to live an entire lifetime in a fandom to be really happy."  
  
Christine snorted. "I've seen how many fanfics you have written, in the works, and planned. To live lives in all of those would take millennia!"  
  
"Precisely!" Heather agreed, grinning. "It's like being immortal!"  
  
Christine just shook her head. "Only you, Heather. Naw, I'd wanna just pop in, have adventure, kick tail, hang out with some hot guys, then head on to the next adventure. One shots for me."  
  
"Huh." Heather scratched her chin, frowning a little. "A girl that goes into different fandoms, wrecks havoc, then moves on. Y'know, that could make for a really interesting fanfiction."  
  
"Don't you dare!" The younger girl yelled, leaning over to lightly bop the other on the head. "Oh no, you don't! You have way too many fanfics on your plate already! First you have to finish Caribbean Secrets."  
  
"I finished Caribbean Secrets," Heather interrupted. "And the sequel's not going to well. I have no clue how to write a romance with Norrington!"  
  
"As I was saying," Christine ignored her protests. "You need to finish that one, or your reviewers will skin you alive."  
  
"They already will when they read the next chapter," Heather muttered.  
  
"Then, once you've finished that - Ring Games. I ask you - when are you introducing Christe?!"  
  
She shook her head. "Naw, I told you, that story turned itself into a flaming Mary Sue. I'm dropping it indefinitely."  
  
"A crying shame. I liked it. And what about Welcome to the Real World?"  
  
"Temporarily on hold until I can get to see the second and third Matrix movies. According to Sarah, the second one supports my theory, but the third one totally blows it out of the water. I need to see the movies to find out what direction I'm going to be taking that one."  
  
Christine rolled her eyes. "I still can't believe that the girl that has the most obsessive theories about that movie still hasn't seen the sequels yet."  
  
"The life of a University student is a busy one," Heather protested. "Something had to give, and in my case, it got to be movies."  
  
"Yeah, but you are so going to go see Lord of the Rings, right?!" Christine pointed sternly at the older girl.  
  
"Of course. You think I'd miss Legolas?"  
  
The younger girl just shook her head. "Only you. But that reminds me - weren't you writing a story about an Urak-hai?"  
  
"Naw, that's my role-playing character, Urgh. The story for that fandom was the pseudo sequel to Caribbean Secrets with me and my room mate."  
  
"Ranna, is it?"  
  
"Ramya."  
  
"Right. So you have to write that one, too."  
  
"I never committed to that one," Heather pointed out. "I merely thought of it, and shared the idea with you!"  
  
"Which you should know is a mistake if you aren't planning on committing to it," Christine shot back. "Okay, then - X-Men, Batman, Star Trek, Naruto, DBZ - all those other stories you have sitting on fanfic.net waiting for you to finish them?"  
  
"I don't have Star Trek or Naruto stories on fanfic yet," Heather protested. "And technically, I haven't even written any of my Naruto fanfic yet. I've just drawn them, and planned them. Not the same thing."  
  
Christine just rolled her eyes. "Right. Brilliant. Don't you actually have four separate Naruto stories on the go?"  
  
Heather just grinned sheepishly. "Er.well, there's Aka's story, the Gaara one, the Phoenix one, and the one with the three of us. Y'know, you, me and Jen, all ninjas from different villages. Won't that be fun?"  
  
The younger one grinned. "It will be, if you ever actually end up writing it."  
  
Christine's brother came darting down the aisle as Heather stuck her tongue out at her younger friend. "Hey, Christine, mom says it's time to go home!"  
  
"Okay, just a minute!" she called after his already retreating back. Gathering up her books and papers, Christine tugged her coat on. "Well, I'll see you soon, right?"  
  
"Yeah, dad wants me to have you over sometime before I go home. He wants to talk about those CDs with you."  
  
"Gotcha. See you soon!"  
  
And with that, Christine disappeared out the door.  
  
Several days later, all the presents had been exchanged, all the turkey had been eaten, and the post-Christmas lethargy had begun to settle in. That was when, on the evening of Monday night, at about two hours after everyone else had gone to bed, Heather was settling onto the air mattress with a slight bounce, and Christine was pulling the bed's blankets up to her chin.  
  
"G'night," Heather yawned.  
  
"Same to ya," Christine agreed, rolling heavily onto her side. "See ya in the morning, and all that."  
  
"Right."  
  
Silence reigned, and in only a few moments, the two had dropped off to sleep.  
  
Their sleep was comfortable, peaceful, and restorative. For a few minutes, anyway.  
  
A brilliant light suddenly blazed on in the room, and both girls whimpered, throwing hands up to protect their eyes. "It cannot be seven o'clock already," Heather groaned.  
  
"No, that it would not be," a male voice called cheerfully, and Heather growled, forcing herself up on one elbow to send a death glare into the light. "Brian.?!"  
  
"Oh, isn't this lovely," the voice sighed. "I tell you, I go out of my way, make elaborate plans, go to all this trouble for them, and what do I get? I get mistaken for someone's sixteen year old brother."  
  
"Alexander?" Christine blinked.  
  
"Even better! The fourteen year old brother! And don't even think about suggesting the munchkins!"  
  
"Who are you then?!" Heather demanded suspiciously, fumbling for a moment, then jamming her glasses on, "Show yourself!"  
  
Finally, the light dimmed, revealing a tall, thin man with silver hair that hung long and straight past his pale face. He had pronounced laugh and worry lines, yet still maintained a strange air of youth. He wore a neat and simple black suit.  
  
"For a minute there," Christine muttered, "I expected the white wizard."  
  
"'Show yourself?'" He repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Pretentious, aren't we?"  
  
Heather made no response to that. Instead, her eyes were wide, her mouth gaped, and she looked like she was trying desperately with no success to say something. At last, she gasped out a strange word. "C - c - charon?!"  
  
The stranger swept a deep bow. "At your service, as always."  
  
Christine gave them both odd looks. "Charon?" she repeated.  
  
Heather didn't reply, and instead flopped back on the air mattress with a bounce. "I'm dead," she announced firmly. "I'm dead, and my characters are coming to escort me into the afterlife."  
  
"Oh, come on, it's not that bad," Charon crouched beside her.  
  
She jabbed a finger at him. "I made you up."  
  
"Really. Claiming to have created the original Greek myths now too, are we?"  
  
Christine leaned over to poke the man in his suited shoulder. "What are you talking about?"  
  
Neither answered her, and Heather said instead, "Okay. I didn't invent you. I did, however, take your myth and modify both it and you to fit my story. How in the bloody hell did you become real?!?"  
  
"Okay, I'm officially lost," Christine threw up her hands, making bother of them turn to look at her. "The only Charon you wrote about was in Caribbean Secrets!"  
  
"Precisely," Charon nodded. "It was a good story, wasn't it?"  
  
Nobody answered him. Instead, both teenagers reached down and pinched themselves. Several times. And got the bruises to prove it wasn't just a dream.  
  
"So, let me get this straight," Christine said warily. "You are the Charon of Caribbean Secrets. Therefore, you are Charon, the boat driver of the river Styx who brings people into the Underworld in Greek myth. Ergo, you are also then the Charon who sent me and Heather into the movie of Pirates of the Caribbean - in a story, mind, you shouldn't even be here since that was a story and you are therefore not even supposed to be real - and are also, therefore, the one that was going to send Heather into Lord of the Rings just because Hades found the previous mistake amusing, and so you were to then do this full time."  
  
"Brilliant. Yes." Charon stood at the window, hands draped loosely behind his back. "But here's the thing - in Heather's quote - unquote 'fanfiction', she chose the third option. Which seems to me to be the thing she would really do. The only thing is, have you read the proceeding chapters? Every other paragraph, she rants that she had to get you home safely."  
  
"So?" Heather butted in, not appreciating the way he was talking as though she wasn't there.  
  
"So.the reason you wrote that into the fanfic was to try and convince yourself that that was why you chose that first option."  
  
"I don't get it."  
  
Charon sighed, and turned back to face them. "Look, Caribbean Secrets was not just a silly fanfiction. You did not just invent it off the top of your head. It really happened. But the difference lies in which option you took. In your silly little story, you stayed. You were happy. In reality..you chose the first option. You went back to the exact moment everything started..with no idea that it had happened at all."  
  
"I wouldn't have picked that option!" Heather protested, Christine nodding her agreement.  
  
"I know. Except.you didn't have the third option. You only had the first and the second. I didn't give you the third, and you didn't want to worry your families, so.."  
  
Blank stares met his sheepish smile.  
  
"You mean to say." Christine gestured helplessly. "That that really happened?!?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
Silence reigned.  
  
"Oh, ducky." Heather said at last.  
  
"So what are you doing here, then?" Christine  
demanded.  
  
"Oh, this is good," Charon grinned, perching on  
the end of the bed. "See, Hades really did think it  
was great fun. So really, I am supposed to send into  
different fandoms. But I also heard what you said,  
Christine, about one shots, and since it was Heather  
that dominated the misadventure last time, I thought  
you should get a say in what happens. So you get one  
shots, like you suggested."  
  
"We're going to be going into different  
fandoms?" Christine asked, disbelieving.  
  
"Oh yes. Of course, Heather's the fiction  
writer, so you'll be going into her worlds."  
  
"My worlds?" Heather shot him a narrow eyed look. "What's that mean?"  
  
"Well, every fandom you've ever made a foray into - through drawing, writing, what have you - you get to visit and adventure in!" Charon beamed. "I'll be like being immortal, you'll get to live through a thousand lives!"  
  
Christine groaned. "And will any time pass here?"  
  
"None at all." He was positively glowing. "Well, I'll be off, you two have fun!"  
  
"Wait, what-"  
  
Too late.  
  
There was a sound like the popping of a balloon, a bright flash of light..then they were floating. For a moment, it was just the empty whiteness that characterizes dreams and out of body experiences, then quite suddenly, they were floating in the middle of a city. Right between a building that looked vaguely like the Sears tower, and another that looked like the CN tower, over a busy city street.  
  
And they were showing no signs of plummeting to their deaths, either.  
  
Reaching down, Heather patted down her stomach. "I'm.floating. And my hands don't go through me, either, so I'm not dead!"  
  
"Weird," Christine said slowly, staring down at the ground. "Is it just me, or does everything look at little..cartoony?"  
  
"It's just - AHH!" Heather had turned to look at Christine, and instead, back pedaled away, eyes wide. "AHH! AHH! AHHHHHH!"  
  
"What?" Christine turned to look at Heather, but seconds later, her fingerless hands were slapped on each of her cheeks, and she joined Heather in screaming. "AHH! AHH! AHHHHH!"  
  
No one seemed to notice the two, floating, screaming girls in the middle of the city, but then, this city was used to odd things like that.  
  
"I have no fingers!" Christine wailed. "And my mouth is reduced to a hole in my head! And my eyes are gynormous! And my legs are just little sticks! And my hair's one solid mass! And I'm little!?"  
  
"I'm wearing pink!?!" Heather wailed, tears gushing in streams from her eyes.  
  
Christine stopped. "That's the worst part of this?!"  
  
"It's PINK!?" Heather whimpered, gesturing at her dress, which was in fact, a pink sundress with a black stripe across her chest. And she wore knee length white socks, polished mary janes, her blonde hair was done in two long pigtails, and her massive, round glasses barely covered her monstrously round eyes.  
  
In short, Heather (and Christine, when you got to that) had been turned into some kind of horrifying.cute...animated...Powerpuff Girls.  
  
"You wroting &*%#$*! Powerpuff Girls fanfiction?!" Christine wailed, then paused a moment. "What.%&$*." She tried again, experimentally. "Look! &%$@! I can't even swear properly here!?!"  
  
"You mean we get to say nifty symbols instead?! Ampersand! Percentage! Dollar symbol! Left bracket! Ooh..this is fun!"  
  
"We're stuck as %^$*ing Powerpuff girls!" Christine roared. "You wrote Powerpuff girls fanfiction?!"  
  
"No." Heather protested, slowly. "I only thought of a neat idea."  
  
"Which was..?"  
  
Her little cheeks flushed a cute shade of pink. "A Sailor Moon Poweruff Girls crossover."  
  
Christine slapped a hand to her forehead. "Oy. Bubbles and Serena in the same vicinity? Instant headache."  
  
"Well, the whole point was that Bubbles and Serena were both supposed to really be the same person. Who Buttercup and Blossom were supposed to be is probably pretty obvious."  
  
"I hate you."  
  
"Me too, sometimes," Heather agreed, playing with the hem of her pink dress. "But hey, since we're here, and since we can fly and everything.let's go beat up Mojo Jojo!"  
  
Christine raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right?"  
  
"No! I mean, think about it. We can fly, right? So we're probably..the Professor's second experiment with that X stuff!"  
  
"'That X stuff'?" Christine repeated. "You don't even know what it's called?!"  
  
"Sue me, I've seen the show twice," Heather stuck her tongue out. "I only know that the town's called Townsville, that the girls were an experiment gone wrong, and that there's a turbaned monkey called Mojo Jojo for a villain. I can't even remember the mayor's name. Is it..Mr. Mayor, or something like that?"  
  
"Saints above have mercy on us," Christine muttered. "Heather. Having no idea of whether we have any powers other than flight - and not even being able to control those flight abilities - you want to go fight a villain that even the three main characters can't totally destroy?"  
  
"I can so control my flight!" Heather dove, and pulled a loop-the- loop. "See? And besides, we're 'self-insertions', and everyone knows self- insertions are Mary Sues, and everyone knows that Mary Sues can always whoop everyone else's butts. Besides, Charon said we're immortal!"  
  
"He said it'll be like we're immortal."  
  
"Same thing."  
  
Christine glared at her. "You're the English major, and you've never even heard of a simile? A comparison using like or as. He didn't say we'd be immortal, he said it'd be like we were immortal. Big difference."  
  
"You're too pessimistic. C'mon!" Without a backwards glance, Heather set off, punching through the air like Superman, laughing like a maniac. "Monkey boy, here we come!"  
  
"Well, someone has to make sure she doesn't kill herself," Christine muttered, and took off after her.  
  
Now, the thing about a place like Townsville is that it belongs to that amazing realm of reality called cartoons. And inside this realm of cartoon, nothing is ever allowed to remain peaceful for long - it goes against all the natural laws of their world. Another such rule is that when a cute, big-eyed, child heroine goes looking for trouble (with the sold intent of writing wrongs and triumphing over evil, of course) she will never find it.  
  
It's when she stops looking that it springs on her.  
  
"We've looked all over this city," Heather whined, floating in a manner that clearly showed her fatigue. "And we can't find Mojo Jojo anywhere. I'm tired."  
  
"Ah well, too bad, guess we can't go fight him then." Christine grinned, grateful. "How about we go find the Professor and the girls? They can help us out while we're here?"  
  
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Heather sighed, and began following her away when the buildings around them shook. "What's going on?!"  
  
The buildings shook again, then suddenly, a giant robotic monkey appeared from behind a skyscraper, and sitting in the glass dome on the top of it's head..Mojo Jojo.  
  
"Whoot! I knew we could find him!" Heather crowed, and flew at the device, eye lasers flashing. No idea how she got eye lasers.  
  
It looked like it might be a good heroic, adventurous battle - except that the giant Mojo Jojo monkey suddenly stepped on the little pink and blonde blur. There was a rather sickening squish, and when the monkey stepped back, Heather's crushed little Powerpuff body was stuck to the bottom of it's foot.  
  
"Oh..gross." Christine gagged. "So much for immortal."  
  
"Ooops.this may not have been the best first choice."  
  
Christine turned around to see Charon - albeit a Powerpuff styled Charon floating behind her. He made a face, then shook his head. "Methinks I need to explain a few rules."  
  
He snapped his fingers, and disappeared, along with Christine and the pink blob that the Mojo Jojo robot had been trying to scrape off its foot.  
  
Leaving behind a very confused evil overlord monkey and his robot, which, of course, was defeated by a certain rainbow blur, which righted wrongs, triumphed over evil, and saved the day. Of course.  
  
Although from that day on, Bubbles did have an uncontrollable urge to talk to cats, dress up in sailor dresses, and try to throw tiaras at villains.  
  
Thought that is another story. 


End file.
